The last time Vogue spoke to Anna October, she had just fled her home in Ukraine for Paris. With rockets visible outside the window of her house, close to the Ukrainian Secret Service offices, she had no other choice. Three months down the line, with the war loudly rumbling on, October is trying to stay grounded while still miles from home.
“I’m keeping strong and active, but my heart is crying every day when I read news from my homeland,” says October. “I am grateful for all the support that my country and myself are receiving from the world, but the war is still happening and I will not be anything close to happy until we win it.” The only time Anna feels better is when she is helping others. Silence, she explains, is dangerous.
October’s mission to help her country’s creatives, in part through her friend, the former Vogue Ukraine staffer Julie Pelipas’s Bettter.Community, is gaining momentum. This week, LVMH donated 10,000 metres of fabrics to help sustain Ukrainian designers, and Anna is committed to securing wholesale partnerships for next season. In between all this, she has rebooted her website to sell her spring/summer 2022 line.
Designed by Ukrainian creative collective Future Perfect, the ecommerce platform plays into the lightness, femininity and grace of Anna October, the brand. “We got rid of everything which isn’t necessary to save more space for the beauty,” she explains of zeroing in on what has become fundamental to her. “Here, we try to balance feminine brutalism and brutal feminism.”
With all this going on, it would be easy to forget about the clothes. The collection evokes a life before war, when October used to summer on her favourite Greek island of Hydra with her friends – brave, elegant, dedicated, talented and beautiful women she now cherishes more than ever. “This is an ode to those tender feelings we had there together,” says October of “posh Greek evenings and chic guests”.
Those elegant participants of nights spent sipping wine against the soundtrack of cicadas are, in October’s mind, wearing easy ribbed-knit dresses, silky colour-pop slips, and delicate linen numbers with sensual cut-outs. “She is an aesthete and hedonist,” asserts Anna. “She admires the poetry of everyday life, and sees beauty in simple things.” Nothing in the edit of sexy-wearable separates – from the delicate tie-straps to each artful side slit – is superfluous.
Employing Ukrainian craftspeople was non-negotiable, and so she found refugee tailors in Paris. “I feel inspired by the fact that I can support them and we can continue creating even in such difficult times,” she shares. The company is producing orders in relocated Ukrainian production facilities to make every effort to go above and beyond to support the country. Still, every day presents new challenges.
“This week my team member lost her brother in the war – he was 35 and had a daughter. This is a terrific loss,” asserts Anna. “We are separated, but I never felt so close and united with all my team and friends; we are constantly supporting each other.”
Like many of her peers, it is vital for October to keep working in the face of a war that is now escalating in the eastern and southern regions. Against the backdrop of Ukrainian campaigns for “extraction”, to save the country’s wounded warriors from the blocked Azovstal steelworks, October is digging deep to propel herself and others forward. No matter what, she will present her Resort collection in June in Paris. “I have no intention to give up the business of my life,” says this fierce designer.